by Dennis Dalman
Like so many lifelong passionate teachers, Brian and Terry Hurd retired, but they didn’t. Not completely. They just can’t stop teaching – as “subs” in schools throughout the area.
They are not only still teaching, they’re still traveling, learning constantly about every nook and cranny of the world. They’ve been to every continent except one. They haven’t visited Antarctica – not yet anyway.
Hurd figures in their world travels, the time spent away from home amounts to about a year and a half. He made a promise to himself he would visit 60 countries by the time he turns 60. He followed through on that promise.
Sartell connections
Brian Hurd, now 60, was raised in Sartell, the son of Sandy and Ron Hurd, who still live there and have another son, Eric. Brian attended St. Francis Xavier Elementary School, graduated from Sartell High School in 1981 and earned a degree in journalism from St. Cloud State University in 1987. He worked as a reporter for the St. Cloud Times and the Annandale Advocate before earning a teaching license from SCSU in 2001.
For the past 21 years, until he retired last May, Hurd taught social studies in grades 6-8 at Mary of Lourdes Middle School in Little Falls.
His wife of 26 years, Terry, also has a long-time Sartell connection. They’d known each other 14 years before their marriage. She taught sixth grade in that city for 36 years. During their years together, they would commute to their schools from their riverside home just north of Rice – she to Sartell, he to Little Falls.
The Hurds have two daughters, Julie and Amy, from Terry’s previous marriage. Each of them has one child, and the Hurds have one great-grandchild.
Traveling, learning
On their travels, Terry and Brian Hurd not only learned but they also served as teachers. For instance, they taught English classes in China six times throughout the years.
During an interview with the Newsleaders, Hurd mentioned some of the places he and Terry visited through the years: Greece and Italy (“We learned a lot about architecture, history and food in those countries.”), the Greek islands of Mykonos and Santorini, Australia, virtually every country in Europe, Israel, a sightseeing “safari” from Kenya all the way down to South Africa, Central and South America, Southeast Asia – to name just some.
Brian has also written six e-books that were featured on Amazon as Kindle editions. The books’ topics are World Geography, World War I, World War II, the “Cold War,” the Civil War and Westward Expansion and the Holocaust. Those books are also available on the Apple iBookstore.
Holocaust teaching
Hurd is widely known and admired for his expertise and teaching of studies related to the Holocaust, also known as “Shoah,” the Hebrew word for “catastrophe.” That is the name of one of Hurd’s e-books – “Shoah.” During the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler’s Nazis systematically exterminated nearly six million Jews and other “undesirables” throughout Europe with help from Nazi collaborators.
Hurd spent two summers in a prestigious “Teachers Fellow” program at the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. He spent two summers there lecturing and developing Holocaust-related curriculum, which was a big help when he taught that subject in middle-school classes.
He was also chosen to join 24 other teachers on a learning trip to Israel, Germany and Poland, countries where they learned more first-hand evidence of hideous mass crimes against humanity.
Just recently, Brian and Terry returned from a trip to Auschwitz (Nazi-occupied Poland), Dachau (Germany), Treblinka (Poland) and Bergen-Belsen (the “camp” in Germany and the place where the interned Jewish young girl, Anne Frank, died of typhus). Those four places were all “concentration camps” crammed with people doomed to die of forced labor, disease and mass killings (shot, gassed) and then burned or buried in mass graves.
Hurd has met with many survivors of those death camps, and some of them spoke in his classes. One of them was a Christian woman who had been persecuted just because a relative happened to be Jewish.
“They were horrible times,” said Hurd, making an obvious understatement.
He still ponders why the horror would have happened, how Hitler and his Nazi followers were able to take over democracy and initiate a dictatorship. What really bothers Hurd is that it was a monstrous irony that it all happened in a country, Germany, known for its glorious heritage of civilized enlightenment: classical music, literature, philosophy, art, architecture, science, engineering, law, medicine and more.
Hurd has a hard time trying to reconcile that grotesque irony: massive slaughter erupting in a civilized nation.
“Hitler,” he said, “was basically just a redneck hillbilly from Austria.”
Though the Hurds are still busy traveling/teaching, they do have more time to enjoy their home near Rice, high above the west bank of the Mississippi. They tend a massive sloping flower garden, with trails that lead down to the river. They enjoy hosting parties for people, using the wood-fired pizza oven in their yard. Their “parties” usually involve fundraising events for such good causes as Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Boys and Girls Clubs and for various needs of area schools.
It’s pleasant to relax at home without such rigorous scheduling, but the Hurds are not retired couch potatoes – oh no, far from it.
“We’re going to keep moving, keep subbing,” Hurd said.
Brian Hurd stands on the Great Wall of China during one of his and his wife’s six trips to China where they taught classes.
